Reports Isil demanded the release of a female scientist jailed for attempted
murder suggest the group is trying to build support for Isil in Pakistan and
Afghanistan

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) reportedly called for the release of a female Pakistani scientist with ties to al-Qaeda in exchange for James Foley.

According to the New York Times, Isil sent through a "laundry list" of demands to the United States which included the release of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT-trained neuroscientist currently incarcerated in a prison in Texas.

In the United States Dr Siddiqui is considered an al-Qaida courier and fundraiser involved in bomb making, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan, she is seen as an Islamic ‘damsel in distress’ who has been persecuted for her faith.

Their demand taps into feelings of ‘Muslim righteousness’ felt widely throughout the two countries, said Michael Semple, a leading expert on the Taliban and former European Union representative in Kabul.

Sympathy for Dr Siddiqui over her arrest, detention and extradition to the United States is so widespread in Pakistan that its government offered to swap her for a CIA contractor who shot dead two alleged robbers in a Lahore street in 2011.

Dr Siddiqui, a US-trained neuroscientist, was arrested in Ghazni, Afghanistan in 2008 and found to have documents on chemical weapons, dirty bombs and viruses indicating she was planning attacks against American enemies.

When she was interviewed by American soldiers and FBI officers the following day she allegedly grabbed a rifle left on a table and shot at her interrogators. She was treated for gunshot wounds suffered in the struggle and later sent to the United States where she was convicted of attempted murder and jailed for 86 years.

A call for her release would indicate Isil has a contingent of Taliban veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan, a leading terrorism expert told the Telegraph on Thursday.

Isil’s demands for her release would be tactical and strategic, Mr Semple said. “One explanation is that people from the Afghan-Pakistan theatre have transferred to Iraq and Syria and her cause is part of their baggage.

“The strategic explanation is that it’s a good cause, she is a damsel in distress. Isil is trying to mobilise people in righteous condemnation of [what they see as] oppression of the Muslim nation at the hands of the West,” he explained.

Dr Ghairat Baheer, the son-in-law of Afghan insurgency leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said he believed he had been held by the Americans at Bagram jail at the same time as Dr Siddiqui and that she was “mentally disturbed”.

“Muslims all over the world, but especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, have great sympathy for her, regardless of her case, because she is a lady and she was mentally disturbed. The sympathy for her is natural and should be appreciated,” he said.

Palwasha Khan, a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly’s foreign affairs committee, said the country’s religious right had exploited her treatment as a woman.

“The facts behind her incarceration remain murky and undisclosed to date. The anti-West sentiment in Pakistan also helped in evoking great sympathy towards her and respective governments failed to bring the real facts to light”, she said.